BROSSARD, Q.C. It is one of the largest, and most sharply focused, microscopes in the world and for the next year it will regularly turn its attention on a specimen some 600 kilometres away.

For the entire season Montreal’s ravenous hockey community will be extremely aware of Copps Coliseum, the Hamilton Bulldogs and, most pointedly, Louis Leblanc.

The Montreal media have regularly monitored the Bulldogs ever since the Habs anointed Hamilton as their primary breeding ground nine years ago, but Leblanc’s presence at the corner of York and Bay — he won’t start, or probably even end, the season with the Canadiens — will be more of a magnet than ever before. Excepting, of course, Carey Price’s Calder Cup run.

The Canadiens took the 20-year-old centre 18th overall in the 2009 NHL draft, which was held right at the Bell Centre, not much farther than a slapshot away from Leblanc’s hometown of Kirkland. He has lived in the spotlight since he became draft eligible and the glare has only intensified. The Canadiens hadn’t used a higher draft choice to select a Quebec-trained forward since Eric Chouinard went 16th in 1998. (Hopefully, he’ll turn out better than that project.) In fact, the Canadiens hadn’t used a higher pick to select a forward since 10th-overall Andrei Kostitsyn in 2003.

All that boils down to the one single constant of Montreal hockey: pressure. Leblanc auditioned for the role of The Next Favourite Son last season, playing with the Montreal Juniors in nearby Verdun, and was holding his own until he injured his shoulder later in the season. Although he played through the pain, in May he required surgery by the renowned Dr. James Andrews in Florida, and is still recovering. A few weeks before sustaining the original injury, he had been the fourth-highest scorer on the national junior team, which was the best in the world until 20 minutes from the end of the 2011 Christmas tournament.

As he enters the final stages of recovery, Leblanc is participating in the Habs’ rookie camp this week, but not in scrimmages. He and the Canadiens are aiming for a return to real action by the tail end of the NHL pre-season schedule, but it’s clear the club won’t rush the near future at the peril of the long term.

“Right now, I don’t really know,” Leblanc says. “I have to go back one more time to get the full clearance with the doctor in Florida. Hopefully we’re aiming for that, the late games, which is two or three weeks from. Now, I’m just working at getting stronger.

“I started contact last week, every day I’m upping the tempo with my shoulder, doing more hitting drills. I feel almost 100 per cent. There’s obviously timing, and getting back into game shape. But I feel great.”

There is, at best, only one spot available in the Canadiens’ corps of creative, but small, forwards and it won’t go to the 6-foot Leblanc. His game still needs a lot of fleshing out, and he requires the updraft effect of significant AHL ice time.

“Everything is going to be faster, the guys are going to be bigger, older, stronger, and that’s another step toward the NHL,” he says. “And that’s what I want: to be an NHL player for the Canadiens.

“I think my speed obviously has to get stronger. This summer was huge for me, I put on some weight, I got stronger working with (conditioning coach) Pierre Allard. It’s an overall package that I have to work on. I want to play a lot, get some power-play time, some penalty-killing time, just become a better hockey player.”

Hamilton will be Leblanc’s fourth home in as many seasons. After a year with Omaha of the U.S. Hockey League, he played at Harvard as an 18-year-old. When he failed to make the national junior team in the middle of that season, many observers thought it was because he hadn’t been tested in the fires of major junior hockey, so last season he played in Verdun. He had 58 points, 26 of them goals, in 51 games.

Since the world juniors in Buffalo last January, Leblanc has been saying he wanted to spend this year in Hamilton, but the Shawinigan Cataractes, who will host this year’s Memorial Cup, still traded for him in the off-season. That’s the fourth QMJHL team that has held his rights and it is certain to become the third one that won’t ever see him in uniform.

“I think maybe it was my shoulder injury,” he guesses. “I think they took a chance in getting my rights, that maybe, if I’m not ready in three months, they could have me for the end for the season. I’d be very mad if that was the case, and it’s very unlikely because I’m ahead of schedule right now.

“I think I learned what I had to learn in juniors. I think pro is the next thing for me. I don’t think too many 20-year-olds, high draft picks, come back to the Q. I want to learn from (new Bulldogs coach) Clement Jodoin and have a great season in Hamilton.”

Assuming he’s healthy and he matures into the pro game, Hamilton fans are going to love Leblanc. The son of a research chemist (father Yves) and a piano teacher (Marie), he is fully bilingual, thoughtful in his responses and still looks people — even media types — directly in the eye when he’s talking. He’s education oriented and plans to eventually finish his economics degree at Harvard. Last year, he took a business class at McGill while playing for the Juniors.

It must be encouraging for local management, and their sales team, that Leblanc is so outspokenly keen to suit up for the Bulldogs. Like everyone else bleeding bleu, blanc et rouge, Leblanc has Montreal as his endgame, but for now he has one goal in mind: getting fit enough to play in Hamilton, and spending an entire year in the shadow of a mountain Quebecers would call a hill.